


Tiger, Tiger

by Foxwine



Series: Back to the Fold [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Autism Spectrum Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mission Fic, Unreliable Narrator, a mix of classic and rework abilities, things hard light can do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28902507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxwine/pseuds/Foxwine
Summary: The members of the recalled Overwatch may need a refresher course on how to carry out an infiltration mission. And things started out so well.
Relationships: Genji Shimada & Hanzo Shimada, Genji Shimada & Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes & Hana "D.Va" Song
Series: Back to the Fold [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1180190
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> All of the fics in the Back to the Fold series can be read as stand-alone, however they all exist on the same timeline. They are not posted in chronological order, they are in my recommended reading order if one should be reading the whole series. This story takes place several weeks before the events recounted in "Field of Coltsfoot and Bramble".
> 
> I am eternally grateful to the continuing assistance of my beloved sounding-board Demolition, who is utterly appalled at how military this fic isn't.
> 
> Tyger Tyger, burning bright,   
> In the forests of the night;   
> What immortal hand or eye,   
> Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 
> 
> In what distant deeps or skies.   
> Burnt the fire of thine eyes?   
> On what wings dare he aspire?   
> What the hand, dare seize the fire? 
> 
> And what shoulder, & what art,   
> Could twist the sinews of thy heart?   
> And when thy heart began to beat,   
> What dread hand? & what dread feet? 
> 
> What the hammer? what the chain,   
> In what furnace was thy brain?   
> What the anvil? what dread grasp,   
> Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 
> 
> When the stars threw down their spears   
> And water'd heaven with their tears:   
> Did he smile his work to see?   
> Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 
> 
> Tyger Tyger burning bright,   
> In the forests of the night:   
> What immortal hand or eye,   
> Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?  
>  — William Blake

**Chapter One**

  
Symmetra didn’t like planes. No matter how plush and comfortable the passenger space was — which the plane she was on decidedly was not, or how whisper-smooth the ride was — which the Overwatch personnel transport ship certainly was, she could never entirely put out of her mind just how far from the ground she was, even without a window to look out of. She hated how illogical it was that she, a woman who could stand on the edge of the roof of a skyscraper without a trace of vertigo, could not bear the thought of how much empty air lay between herself and the all too solid ground below whenever she rode in a plane.

It was not a feeling that her fellow passengers appeared to share. Across from her, the cyborg, Genji, had drawn up his legs in his seat to sit cross-legged, his hands loose on his knees, the light of his visor dimmed. He had told her once on the way to a previous mission that it was a form of meditation: a series of system checks he always performed before going into battle. The seats to either side of him were empty. Both the girl, D.va, and the strange Australian, the Junker, who had occupied them had thrown off their safety belts and left them the moment that the pilot, Tracer, had announced that it was safe to do so over the intercom. D.va had slipped almost soundlessly to the back of the transport as soon as she was standing. Symmetra assumed that she had gone to check on the offensively pink mech loaded in the cargo bay.

The Junker, the explosives expert who insisted on being called ‘Junkrat’, had slid to the floor and promptly fallen asleep half-curled up in a corner, as comfortable and loose-limbed as a cat in a sunbeam. Symmetra knew that kind of sleep. There had been many other children with her in the Vishkar training dormitories who had slept like that, forgoing their bed for whatever corner they had. In her experience, he would wake up as soon as the noise levels around him changed, or if anyone was foolish enough to touch him, in which case they might be lucky if he only bit them.

She didn’t think that anyone in her erstwhile team was quite so unintelligent. Though there was one she couldn’t claim to be certain of, yet. Symmetra allowed her peripheral vision to shift, taking a fleeting glance at the man who sat directly to her right, mentally reviewing what she knew of him.

Hanzo. Do not call him by his family name. Japanese, an archer, of all the archaic things. She had been on a team with him only once before. They had been posted in very separate areas at the time, however, and in the transport both going and returning the majority of her attention had been taken by Lúcio Correia dos Santos, the revolutionary who had stolen — or perhaps re-stolen — Vishkar technology, as he had become increasingly belligerent and confrontational.

She couldn’t entirely blame him, but she had put in a request to not be teamed with Lúcio except in emergencies after that.

It meant that she knew little of the man seated next to her, or of his skills, since he was often teamed with dos Santos for missions. But, she reflected, that could also be said of many of the other Overwatch members, given her fairly recent addition to their full ranks.

“We’re about three hours out, loves,” Tracer announced as she leaned through the forward door of the personnel compartment. “Got a nice tail wind, so we’ll be arriving pretty close to twilight.” She paused, and scooted further into the cabin. “Hey, where’s Hana?”

Symmetra saw Junkrat’s muscles tensing at the sound of Tracer’s loud voice, and opened her mouth to remind her not to be so startling, but before she could utter a syllable, an accented baritone voice spoke beside her.

“She has gone to the back. Should you not be flying the plane?”

“Autopilot can look after her for a bit while I stretch my legs.” Tracer flapped a hand. “Nothing it can’t handle about ‘fly in a straight line at an altitude of thirty thou’ for a few minutes’.”

Automatically, Symmetra’s mind converted feet to kilometres, and she felt dizzy. Knowing that there was just over nine klicks of emptiness between herself and the ground was, she discovered, entirely worse than simply knowing it was ‘a lot’ of empty space.

It would be best not to dwell, she told herself firmly, nearly failing to notice as Tracer chirped “I’ll just pop to cargo an’ tell Hana the E.T.A.,” before she clattered to the back of the plane.

With the sole pilot of the transport the furthest she could possibly be from the controls without exiting the plane as it hurtled through empty air entirely too far from the ground, ‘not dwelling’ abruptly became the most important thing Symmetra needed to do. She closed her eyes and began methodically going over every design plan she had ever memorized in meticulous detail. The exercise was soothing, blessedly distracting, and so familiar it was nearly meditation. She only vaguely registered it when Tracer zipped back by her on her way back to the pilot seat.

However, voices were far more difficult to tune out than Tracer’s occasional use of odd, whooshing buzzing and streaks of blue light instead of footsteps.

“You are agitated, brother,” Genji’s metallic tones broke through her envisioning of the precise degree of the curve along the edge of a display matrix.

Now that her mind had been so effectively wrenched back to the passenger cabin from the world of cold, clean numbers that she had fled to, Symmetra noticed that the man next to her was hissing through his teeth. She opened her eyes to see that his fingers were tapping soundlessly on the edge of his bow carrying case, which he had pulled into his lap sometime while she had been concentrating.

Across from her, Genji inclined his head slightly down and to the side. She recognized this, having been on several missions with Genji before, all of the ones she had been assigned to but one since she had come to Overwatch. He made that particular gesture with his head whenever he made a statement that was actually a question, which he did bewilderingly often in her opinion. After the third time that she had mistakenly left a question that wasn’t said as a question rudely unanswered, she had memorized the precise angles of the gesture out of pure self-preservation.

Hanzo stopped hissing, though his fingers didn’t stop their soundless movement on his bow case. “There have been several missions close together recently,” he growled. “I have had no opportunity to properly restock.” His fingers stilled, tightening on the hard shell of the bow case. “I’m almost out of scatter arrows. There has been no time to make more.”

A soft sound erupted from Genji, a stutter of sibilant static. “How many?” he asked.

“Five.” Hanzo shook his head. “Far too few, given how many halls were shown on the blueprint.”

Genji made the sibilant, staticy noise again, rocking back in his seat.

Symmetra’s mind leapt through the overheard conversation like a startled deer, and she found herself speaking before her conscious self entirely caught up to it.

“These scatter arrows, you make them yourself?” spilled from her lips.

She suddenly found herself pinned by three stares, belatedly realizing that Junkrat was awake and listening as well, and she fought not to squirm under so much direct attention.

Hanzo’s brows drew together. “I do,” he answered after a far too long moment of staring at her.

The intensity of attention she was receiving was increasingly more unnerving the longer it continued, but Symmetra knew that since she had started on this course she was bound to stay it. “If the action is mainly mechanical rather than programmed, I may be able to produce a working replica given a chance to study it.” Hanzo’s expression did not change, so she continued. “It would not be permanent, but for the course of this action it would be-”

“She thinks she can make a copy’a yer arrow wit’ her light-stuff dealie,” Junkrat interrupted. Symmetra glared at him. “Eeesh, just helping, sheila. Don’t get your pretty dress in a bunch.”

“When I am in need of your help-” she began, only for the Junker to snort explosively and haul himself to his feet.

“Fine, allight, whatever. I’m going ta cargo anyway. Hana knows ta let a man rest insteada going all snake-hissy and technobabbly.”

With that, he stamped off, slamming his peg-leg into the floor with unnecessary force as he left.

As the door leading to the cargo bay clanged shut behind the demolitionist, Hanzo spoke.

“You can make arrows with your...” he paused a moment, searching for a word, “equipment?”

“Yes,” Symmetra answered. “I assume these ‘scatter arrows’ you referred to are a specialized design?”

His eyes narrowed sightly. “They are. And I do not carry the schematics with me into battle.”

“If you will permit me to study one of your remaining scatter arrows, I may be able to produce a copy of it that way,” Symmetra offered.

“Symmetra-san is able to produce many useful creations,” Genji spoke unexpectedly. “You lose nothing by allowing her to make the attempt, _aniki_.”

“I am aware.” Hanzo reached to his quiver, and extracted a single arrow with an over-sized head. He held it out to Symmetra. “This is one of my scatter arrows. The head splits, and breaks apart in a precise manner upon striking a solid object.”

Symmetra took the offered arrow from him, turning it over in her hands in an initial scan. For a hand-made object, it was pleasingly precise. “How do you initiate the splitting of the head?” she asked after getting a good look at it. “Can it be reset after doing so, or will it ruin the arrow?”

“There is a pressure plate.” Hanzo leaned slightly closer to point to it. “Here.”

“Ah,” she said. The pressure plate was small, and partially concealed by its seam being so fine.

“The arrowhead can be taken apart and reset,” Hanzo continued, leaning back to give her precisely as much of a personal bubble as she had maintained between them before, “so long as the vanes have not been damaged or bent.”

She nodded, and let her finger slide over the pressure plate he had pointed out. The bulky arrowhead immediately split apart into four sharp-bladed vanes which rotated slowly and soundlessly around the central point of the arrow’s shaft.

Symmetra was immediately rapt, her eyes taking on an enraptured shine. The maths, the angles, they were so beautiful.

She took her time to simply admire the weapon’s elegance, turning it in every possible direction so that she could see every part. The trigger, the pressure plate and how it initiated the splitting of the head, would be the most complex to replicate, but it was similar enough to another of her memorized designs that she was fairly certain she could adapt it.

“It is lovely,” she sighed at last. “I believe I will be able to make this once I have memorized the dimensions.” She held the arrow out to Hanzo, even though she was reluctant to part with it so soon. “It will be easier to to judge the measurements of the vanes if they are detached. I do not wish to inadvertently damage them in making an attempt to do so.”

“You are the first one I have ever heard call an arrow ‘lovely’, Symmetra-san,” Genji said as Hanzo took the arrow back from her.

“I have been told in the past that my sense of aesthetics is unusual,” she responded distractedly, intent on watching Hanzo’s hands as he carefully detached the sharp vanes from their mounts in the base of the arrowhead.

Her answer elicited a soft splutter of sound from the cyborg before he said softly “’Unusual’ is, I think, not the right word.”

His tone was not one that she knew the meaning of, far too soft and careful to be the sort of derision similar phrasing had been meant to convey in the past. Symmetra chose not to respond. There was a far more important task before her than seeking clarification of his intended meaning.

Hanzo passed her the dismantled arrow. “The two larger and two smaller vanes are identical,” he explained as she carefully took the sharp pieces from him.

She nodded. “Very well.” She turned over one of the vanes in her hands, letting the others and the shaft of the arrow rest in her lap for the time being, and bit her lip slightly, deciding whether to voice the words pushing at her tongue.

She had been warned many times back at Vishkar that to voice an entirely personal request was imperious and undesirable. It was a sign of selfishness, of weakness. However, for the success of the mission the team was about to undertake, she had to produce the most precise copy of the scatter arrow possible without access to any precision measuring tools.

For the sake of success, she would sacrifice the two men’s good opinion of her, she decided. It left a slight hollow feeling. Genji was a good mission companion, willing to explain his meanings to her whenever she pursued them rather than growing irritated with her as so many others had. And Hanzo, though a near stranger, was a highly competent agent of the new Overwatch, someone she would have preferred to retain a good image with.

Still. She licked her lips, and allowed herself to demand something wholly for herself alone.

“Please do not speak. I must memorize the components precisely to make a functional copy, and any distraction will be detrimental to the process.”

She made sure to keep her gaze directed down to the arrow components in her lap as she spoke so that she wouldn’t see their disgust at her weakness, and instead set about constructing a schematic of the arrow in her mind.

It would have been easier with the appropriate measuring tools, but Symmetra knew the dimensions and angles of her artificial arm down to the millimetre. It would serve as both a ruler and a protractor under the circumstances.

The shaft of the arrow was _this_ long, and the fletching went _so_ for _that_ distance before the bend in it changed. The angle of the detached vanes went _that_ way, but only _this_ far, and they attached as _such_...

The outside world dropped away as she committed the projectile weapon to her mind bit by bit.

Weight would be an issue, she realized. Though she had never used a bow herself, the action of the arrow that Hanzo had described suggested that precision in the weight of the components would be as important as their dimensions. Without a scale, there was really only one way to match the weights, though it would be time consuming.

The man sitting next to her made a sound as she pulled an arrow shaft out of light into her hands. No words, just a soft exclamation. She pushed it aside in her mind to concentrate on weighing her construct in her fingers, then the metal shaft of his arrow from her lap. It was wrong. The shaft she had created was too heavy, the fletching too light. She dispelled it with a flick of her hands, adjusted densities, and tried again. Closer.

Again and again for each component she summoned, compared, dispelled, adjusted, and created again, until when she closed her eyes she could feel no differences between the metal and the solid light. Then she committed that to memory too, discarding the incorrect attempts before them.

Finally, she pressed her fingertips to her artificial palm, centred the pattern in her mind, and pulled an entire arrow out of the gleaming lens.

Symmetra looked up, finding that Hanzo had partially turned in his seat to watch her. Across the aisle, Genji appeared to have returned to his meditation, his visor dimmed again from its usual glow.

She held out her created arrow to Hanzo, accidentally meeting his dark eyes with her own for a startled moment before she cast her sight elsewhere.

“It will need to be tested,” she said quietly. “However, this is the best I can produce without access to the schematics or proper measuring tools.”

Hanzo took the arrow and turned it over in his thick hands gracefully, his eyebrows rising as he did. His finger deliberately grazed the pressure plate, and the four vanes lifted as they were supposed to, rotating slowly around the centre point of the arrowhead.

“Impressive,” he murmured. “If it were not for the colour and material, I might easily mistake it for my own work.”

Uncomfortable with his frank appraisal of her work, Symmetra turned her attention to the pieces of the original arrow, which still lay in her lap. Being careful not to bend the delicate attachments of the vanes, she reassembled it by reversing the disassembly that she had watched Hanzo perform earlier.

“Are you able to maintain more than one arrow at a time?” Hanzo asked suddenly, resetting the vanes on the hard light arrow with a faint click.

Startled, she jerked her head up. “I- yes,” she managed. “I can only create one at a time, but since they are a temporary construct, I should be able to produce between twenty or thirty before it tires me, depending on what else I may be called upon to do in this mission.”

As she spoke, Hanzo’s eyebrows rose higher and higher on his brow, making a valiant effort to merge with his hairline. “Twenty or thirty-” he broke his own words off. “What do you mean, ‘temporary’?” he demanded.

“Permanent constructs must be tied in to a power source,” she explained, “which would make using them as a mobile projectile impossible. Without additional external power, they will dispel.”

His brows drew down, and he glared at her.

She had not thought of how the impermanence of the objects she could create might anger him so. She curled her shoulders in defensively, cursing her oversight. She should have expected it, she berated herself, especially after her selfish actions earlier in demanding his silence for her work.

“You are frightening her, Hanzo,” Genji said suddenly. “Symmetra-san, my brother’s reaction to anything he did not expect is to glare. He is not angry at you.”

Symmetra flicked her gaze between the two men. There was no reason, she decided, not to take Genji’s words for the truth. He knew Hanzo far better than she did, and his willingness to explain himself and his own gestures to her made his explanation for the archer’s actions more believable.

“Hanzo will bare his teeth at you if he is angry,” Genji continued in an even tone. “Like an angry dog.”

“Genji-” Hanzo snapped, but he was interrupted before he could continue.

“Symmetra-san does not know you, brother, and yet she is putting such effort into helping you to be fully effective for this mission. I am only assisting her.”

Something in Genji’s tone or his words made Hanzo’s mouth snap shut. Then he sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face before turning to Symmetra.

“I am not angry,” he said. “I’m used to different technologies, and did not realize that this,” he hefted the hard light arrow he still held, “would not be permanent.” He paused, then asked “How long will it last?”

“Half an hour, perhaps forty-five minutes,” she answered, relieved that he had confirmed to her that he wasn’t angry. Her shoulders gradually straightening again, she continued “The time will vary depending on whether or not it is close enough to me to pick up ambient charge.”

“If an object Symmetra-san creates is close enough to her to be charging, it glows. Faintly, like it is now,” Genji added helpfully. “It goes quite a distance around her.”

“Very well,” Hanzo said, just as the sound of the plane’s engines changed in pitch.

“We’re coming in for a landing, loves!” Tracer’s voice crackled cheerfully over the plane intercom. “Anyone who’s not belted into their seat, get that way!”

A few moments later, the door to the cargo hold swung open and D.va slipped through to take her seat next to Genji.

“Coming, slowpoke?” she called through the still-open door, her hands already busy with her seat-belts.

“Nobody told me we were racing,” Junkrat complained, coming through the door and securing it behind him. “And if we were, you cheated by starting ‘fore I got ta me feet,” he added, dropping his long, lanky body haphazardly into the unoccupied seat on the other side of Genji.

D.va leaned around Genji to stick her tongue out at the Junker.

“I will test this arrow when we have landed,” Hanzo said, apparently having decided to ignore the mech pilot and the demolitionist. “Assuming it performs as it should, I propose a change to our formation.”

“Yeah?” Junkrat said, his hands busy with his seat-belts. “What change?”

“That Genji take my place on point, and I replace him to move with you and Symmetra-san. That way, the arrows she makes will retain full charge, and I will not need to circle back when I am in need of more,” Hanzo explained.

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard come outta your mouth, arrow-man.” Junkrat cackled. “But sounds like sense ta me!”

“Not losing my point man whenever he has to reload is good with me,” D.va agreed, nodding.

Symmetra did not contribute, being occupied by keeping up a constant reminder to herself that the plane was landing, not, in fact, simply dropping nine kilometres straight down through the empty air between it and the ground.

**********

As the transport plane settled quietly into a landing and Tracer activated the holographic camouflage, Hanzo freed himself from his seat-belts and flipped his bow carrying case open. Pulling his bow from the padded interior, he unfolded it to its full expanse, and tested the tension of the bowstring in one smooth, practised motion.

At the same time, D.va freed herself from her own seat. She was back through the door into the cargo hold even as the joints on Hanzo’s bow clicked and locked into place. She would need to take a few minutes to free her mech from its restraints before she could get into the cockpit, so her hurry to start was understandable.

Symmetra undid her own seat-belts and took the opportunity to flick temporary hard-light tags onto each of the three team members left in the passenger cabin so that her turrets would ignore them as targets before she entered the cargo hold herself. D.va was still in the process of unstrapping her mech, and Symmetra paused to toss tags onto both the young woman and her machine before she moved on to a convenient power hookup to the side of the hold away from where the round, pink mech and Junkrat’s bulky equipment were strapped in for transport.

Closing her eyes briefly, she recalled the precise blueprints of a receiving teleport pad, then opened them and formed the device on the floor at her feet, carefully tying it into the plane’s power system through the outlet she stood by as she did.

Behind her as she worked, she heard Junkrat’s distinctive gait as he called out “Got that machine o’ yours unshipped all right there, D.va?”

“Last one!” was the response from the mech pilot, in a voice that chirped, bird-like, ringing through the hold, a distinct pitch higher than the way that she had spoken earlier in the passenger cabin.

As Symmetra straightened from the final delicate touches that attached the teleport pad to the electrical current of the outlet, she heard Genji laugh quietly from very close just behind her. Since she hadn’t heard his approach she started a little. Still, it was not the first time he had snuck up on her — intentionally or not — and it was doubtful that it would be the last either given how quietly he always moved.

She turned to him, and her question about why he had laughed must have shown on her face because he answered it before she could speak.

“My brother,” he said, gesturing to the rest of the cargo hold to his side, “can be most amusingly methodical.”

Symmetra followed the direction of Genji’s airy flick. Hanzo stood several feet away from the two of them, glaring mightily at her constructed hard-light scatter arrow as he swung it back and forth in the air, first nearer, then further away from them.

Mentally, she judged the distance. “Is he..?”

“I believe he is attempting to judge the reach of your charging field, yes.” Genji chuckled again. “It would be quite difficult to see the change of the glow in this light, that must be why he frowns so.”

Symmetra’s lips quirked, not entirely with her permission. “You are taking great care that I do not misunderstand your brother,” she commented.

“Hanzo is difficult to understand at the best of times, not only for those who have known him for a short time.” Genji shrugged.

“I wonder, then, if your kindness is meant for me or for him,” Symmetra said with a smiling sidelong glance at the cyborg.

Genji laughed hard enough at that that his shoulder vents released steam, causing Junkrat to pause in strapping on his grenade harnesses to look over in surprise.

“Why can it not be both?” Genji asked when the laugh subsided.

“All ready, team?” Tracer called as she entered the hold. “Plane’s fully cloaked, and it’ll be dark soon!”

“Two more buckles,” Junkrat responded. “Wish we had ‘Hog along ta help carry all these luvely bombs.”

“Meka activated and ready to pwn some noobs!” D.va carolled tinnily through her mech’s outer speakers. “And also loaded with the bombs Junkrat is complaining about having to not carry!”

Junkrat blew a very loud, very wet raspberry at her.

Symmetra flicked a final hard light tag onto Tracer. “I have placed the teleport return pad. Our exit is ready to be activated,” she said before creating her headset and settling it carefully over her hair.

“I must test this scatter arrow Symmetra-san made outside to be certain it works,” Hanzo said. “Otherwise, I am prepared.”

“I am ready,” Genji said simply, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.

“Alright, Hanzo tests his arrow, and we’re good to go.” Tracer nodded, and blurred over to the cargo door mechanism. “Get your belts done and get moving,” she called back to Junkrat as she hit the button to start the doors.

The lower ramp dropped first, allowing Symmetra, Genji, and Hanzo to exit, ducking to avoid the upper door, which was much slower to rise. Outside the plane, it was just turning toward evening, the air beginning to cool. They were on top of a large single-story building, probably a warehouse of some sort given the neighbourhood they were supposed to have landed in, surrounded by other, similar buildings.

The one they were going to raid and destroy was nearby, Symmetra knew. It was somewhere to the east of their current position so that any remaining glare from the sunset would be in their favour, close enough to be convenient for getting a not-so-stealthy mech there without being detected by local law enforcement, but not so close that the building they had landed on would be caught in the explosion or hit by debris. She had memorized a street map of the immediate area during Winston’s briefing for the mission, but she would need to be on the street to orient herself since the sea of roofs around them obscured the view of where the roads actually were between them.

Hanzo spun the hard light arrow in his fingers. “The alleyway below should suffice,” he decided aloud.

Genji was already moving toward the edge as the archer spoke, apparently having anticipated the choice. “It is clear of people,” he reported unnecessarily since their landing location would have been chosen specifically for having a complete lack of people around it.

“Good.” Hanzo strode over to join his brother at the edge.

Symmetra followed, wanting to see how the unusual arrow functioned.

When he reached the edge of the roof, Hanzo nocked the faintly glowing arrow, but only drew it partway back before pausing to look down into the alleyway between the warehouse they stood on top of and the one next to it.

Then, in a single smooth movement, he drew the bow completely, which made the side of the bow activate the pressure plate on the arrow as it swept over it. Even as the vanes of the arrowhead separated, he released the arrow into the air.

The arrow hit the wall opposite them with a quiet jingling noise, and the vanes sprang away in all directions from the shaft of the arrow, rebounding from the point of impact. Two rebounded again quickly, having hit the ground with individual faint musical-sounding notes, and the other two rang out only a little bit later, one from the wall under them, another somewhere further away. There was a soft, multi-toned jingling from the alleyway below for longer than she would have thought, the sound making it seem as if there were at least a half dozen or more vanes flying below and rebounding from the ground, the walls, and a few metal cans rather than the four she knew there to be.

“The material does not feel like metal, and the sound is very different, but the behaviour of the arrow is the same,” Hanzo declared. “The substitute is usable.”

Symmetra crafted another hard light arrow before he finished his second sentence. “How many will you need to carry at a time?” she asked, handing it to him and starting another.

“Since you must make them one at a time, a small number should suffice, to save time,” Hanzo said, taking the second arrow as she handed it to him and started a third. “Five. I will tell you when I am down to the last two.”

Symmetra nodded. It would be quick to only have to produce the arrows three or four to a batch, which would let their team continue moving at a good pace.

“Very well.” Genji lifted a hand to the side of his visor, a thing Symmetra knew he did only as a courtesy, and his next words came through the communicators. “Tracer, have you been alerted to the change in formation?”

“Yep!” Tracer answered through the comms. “Junkrat filled me in while D.va offloaded her mech.”

“Excellent,” Genji responded. “D.va, are you at street level?”

On the plane, Tracer was in command, but for the mission on the ground, Genji was the senior agent for their current team. The smoothness of the transition was pleasing to Symmetra, any jaggedness in the switch having been long since smoothed away within the new Overwatch long before her arrival to the roster.

It was not ideal, having the team leader in the point position, scouting ahead of the rest of them, but it was something that could be dealt with. Something that would have to be dealt with.

On the other side of the faint shimmer in the air that was the body of the plane, there was the low, hissing roar distinctive of D.va’s mech thrusters being gently tapped.

“Am now!” the young woman called through the comms.

“Roof ladder’s ‘round the corner from th’ street,” Junkrat added to the comm chatter with a background clang. “I’m going first this time, Symm, you’re slow!”

Symmetra handed her fifth hard-light arrow to Hanzo, and hurried toward the other side of the camouflaged plane, touching the photon projector fastened at her hip to make sure it was secure enough to not come unclipped during a climb down a ladder as she went, then reached up to her visor to activate her own communicator.

“Wanting to use the rungs of a ladder rather than sliding down it like an addled lemur is not ‘slow’, it is appropriate usage,” she retorted.

Her answer was a deranged cackle and a squeal of metal on metal from his prosthetic hand as Junkrat swung himself over the edge of the roof and slid down the ladder, hitting the ground with a thud that was hard enough to be heard from the roof, not just through the comm microphone that he had left on for the entire decent.

Tracer giggled into the comms.

Symmetra peered over the edge, seeing Junkrat’s upturned face at the foot of the roof access ladder. His grin was so wide she could clearly see his eye-teeth on both sides as well as all the teeth in between even in the lower light at street level.

“Gotta have two actual feet ta use rungs properly anyway!” he yelled up at her, the comm echoing him in her ear.

“Move,” she ordered, deciding not to attempt to pursue the disagreement, or whatever it was they were having. “I will not have you staring up my skirt again.”

It did not matter that the Junker had an appreciation for her legs, or for seeing the entire of them from below as she used a ladder, it was his penchant to share that appreciation at the top of his lungs across the team comm channel that she really disliked.

Green lights flickered in her peripheral vision, and Genji was at the foot of the ladder, yanking Junkrat away toward the street by grabbing one of the shoulder straps of the Junker’s grenade harnesses and pulling the other man away with a yelp.

“Junkrat, you are quick to descend, but too slow to move afterward,” the cyborg commented as he dragged the demolitionist away, but with no sting in his tone that Symmetra could detect.

As soon as Junkrat had been hauled far enough away to not have a view up her skirt while she did so, Symmetra climbed over the edge of the roof onto the ladder, descending as quickly as she safely could to the ground.

**********

The trip through the streets was uneventful, the warehouses around them shuttered and quiet due to the evening weekend hour, which was good because each step of D.va’s Meka rang on the pavement clearly, ruining any stealth the team might have had. If the mech had not been needed to carry enough of Junkrat’s bombs to bring down the building they were infiltrating it would have been the worst possible choice for the mission just due to the noise of it walking. Symmetra greatly regretted the injury Roadhog was still recovering from that had kept him from the mission, prompting the last-minute substitution of D.va and the accompanying noise.

“I will review the mission as we are moving,” Genji said once they were all walking. “We are infiltrating the base of a local terrorist group that has been increasing its activities recently, and that is suspected to have ties to Talon.” His voice was a calming murmur in the comms.

Symmetra nodded to herself, remembering the projected pictures from the mission briefing back at the base of the destruction and carnage the terrorists had laid claim to. They were mainly an anti-omnic group, Winston had explained, however they had — in her opinion — a rather over-broad definition of omnic sympathizing and little care for any human collateral to the damage they did on top of being appallingly destructive to both buildings and infrastructure.

“Once we have accessed the warehouse they are using as their headquarters,” Genji went on, “our goals are twofold.”

‘Twofold’ was not one of the cyborg’s usual words, Symmetra noted. It was one of Winston’s, however, and he had used it at the initial briefing.

“Symmetra, your primary task is to locate the group’s offline data storage, and to copy anything that could prove any ties they may have to Talon, particularly financial or supply records,” Genji reminded her. “Afterwards, or at the same time — whichever is most convenient, Junkrat will set up his prepared bombs in order to bring the building down.” His helmet turned to the Junker hop-skipping along the street beside D.va’s mech. “With the minimum possible damage to the surrounding buildings,” he added.

“Take all’a the fun outta it,” Junkrat answered.

“Remember what McCree said,” Tracer responded. “The idea of what we’re doing is to stop terrorists without becoming them ourselves. Blowing up extra buildings would be what they’d do, not us.”

Symmetra remembered Rio as Tracer spoke, the first time she had allowed herself to see what Vishkar was, the Favela burning all around her and Sanjay in her ear, saying that the collateral damage was of no more consequence than burning trash as people had died.

“We will be better than them,” she said.

“Alright, alright,” Junkrat conceded.

There was a brief silence, then Genji continued.

“Once the building is prepared to explode, Symmetra will build a teleport back to the plane,” he said as if the mission review had never been interrupted. “The team will then withdraw, and Junkrat will set off the bombs. Confirming the destruction of the building will complete the mission.”

“Simple,” Hanzo said.

“Yes,” Genji agreed. “When we enter, Junkrat will be paired with D.va, and Symmetra with Hanzo. I will take point, and Tracer will scout ahead as my partner. Everyone, watch your partner’s back. We will be in the middle of their territory, and we do not know how many of the terrorists will be on site when we enter.”

“Understood!” D.va carolled, the first to respond.

“Gotcha!” Tracer was the next.

“I am prepared,” Hanzo said.

“I know my task,” Symmetra told the team.

“Time to blow up some shit!” Junkrat yelled, and then cackled madly.

“Very well. Let us go,” Genji said, picking up speed down the street.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

  
Things went sideways almost as soon as the team crashed through an unguarded side door of the target warehouse. They had known the inside space had been converted, but not that it had been rendered into a chaotic maze of walls and doorways. The terrorist group had also made their own later modifications, ripping out or boarding up doors at apparent random, and tossing up cheap-looking extra walls across several of the corridors.

The sheer disorder of it all made Symmetra’s skin crawl.

They had also, as it turned out, made their entry through an emergency exit that had not had its alarm deactivated so a siren was steadily yodelling. The sound dragged along Symmetra’s nerves like a claw, and she adjusted her headset to muffle it as the team cautiously made their way along a hallway that seemed to go in the direction of one of the main roof support columns.

“I have had to adjust my headset to the point that it will filter out most of your voices,” she informed the team. “I will only be able to hear you through the comms.”

“Very well,” Genji responded. “Stay alert. It is only a matter of time before those who come to investigate the alarm will come across us.”

“At least the alarm covers up all’a the noise from the bunny-bot,” Junkrat put in. “Gives us a little leeway, maybe.”

“It’s a Meka, not a bunny-bot!” D.va protested.

Junkrat started to say something, but whatever it was, it was drowned out by a sudden yelp from Tracer, who had been scouting ahead. Oddly, the yelp dopplered into existence instead of out of it as would be the natural course of things. Combined with the buzzing whirr of her chronal device being activated, it sounded almost musical.

“Tracer, report,” Genji said with a hand gesture at Junkrat that made the demolitionist snap his mouth shut mid-word.

“This isn’t just their base of operations here,” Tracer said breathlessly. “I just blinked into a giant room set up as a barracks! With a bloody lot of men in it!”

“Tracer, did they see you?” Genji pressed, his entire body tensing.

“Think so,” Tracer answered. “I rewound out of there before they could blink, but a bunch were heading for the door I came in by.” Extra noise crept into the background of her words. “Ooh, yeah. There’s the yelling. They don’t know where I am now, though.”

“Keep it that way,” Genji advised. His head turned to the rear of their group, where Hanzo and Symmetra were. “Hanzo.”

“Yes,” Hanzo grunted, apparently knowing what Genji wanted without his having to say. “D.va, lean your mech aside.”

“D.va, nuzzling the left wall!” the young woman chirped, veering her Meka to the side of the hall.

“Nuzzling?” Junkrat garbled out, and Tracer giggled.

Hanzo ignored them, and slid to the right, shooting an arrow down the hall past the bulk of the mech and into a wall. “Sonic arrow,” he murmured. “Marked.”

Half a breath later, Genji made the strange staticy sibilant sound that he had made on the plane when Hanzo had brought up his lack of arrows. “There are many more than we had planned for.”

“And heading this way,” D.va added, apparently having configured her mech’s sensors to read the signal from Hanzo’s sonic arrow. “Not good.”

“We are far too exposed here,” Hanzo agreed. Symmetra saw his gaze tilt upward. “Genji. The walls.”

The cyborg’s head lifted, looking up as well. He barked out a short laugh. “Of course.”

Suddenly, he was moving, bursting upward and twisting to kick out a ceiling tile above the group. Thanks to the adjustment to her headset, the action was all but soundless to Symmetra as the tile went flying away above somewhere.

Genji kept twisting in the air so that he landed on his feet, crouched low to the floor. He had barely touched down before he sprang again, launching himself through the hole he had created.

Junkrat whistled, making Symmetra wince. “Nice.”

“The wonderful thing about Tiggers their ass is made out of springs!” D.va crowed, laughing.

Genji’s head and shoulders reappeared, upside-down, through the hole in the ceiling, the dark ribbon from the back of his head tumbling down to dangle into the hallway. “Focus. Both of you,” he ordered.

“What’s going on?” Tracer interjected. “Keep me in the loop.”

“The walls only go up to the ceiling,” Genji said. “It is completely open above.”

Tracer whooped gleefully. There was a crash, and the odd whistling of one of the pilot’s blinks. “Now, that’s what I call elbow room!” she reported. Then, after a pause she added “Wow, Genji, what a moonrise!”

Junkrat started cackling immediately. It took the others somewhat longer to clue in, if D.va’s somewhat later snicker and Hanzo’s suddenly playing with the plain stud in one of his ears just after were any indication. Symmetra, however, was completely in the dark.

“Shut up,” Genji offered, and vanished back up into the space above the ceiling.

“I do not understand,” Symmetra protested. “What does Genji have to do with moonrise?”

There was a pause, silent except for the ongoing wail of the alarm they had set off. Then Junkrat all but doubled over, howling with laughter.

“Tracer, this is your fault. You will deal with it,” Genji said.

“Er... I’ll explain when we’re done here,” Tracer promised.

“The men approaching will not be slowing down for your... crudity,” Hanzo pointed out, and Symmetra noted the hint that his words had contained. “Symmetra, are you able to climb up?”

“Give her a boost,” Genji’s voice came before she could answer. “Take my hand.” His hand appeared, reaching down through the hole in the ceiling.

“No way those tiles are going to take my Meka’s weight,” D.va said even as she shifted closer to the hole so that Symmetra could use the mech’s leg as a step-stool to reach up to grab Genji’s proffered hand.

With a leap on her part and a pull on Genji’s — along with an arm around her ribcage as soon as she was high enough to grasp — Symmetra found herself sitting on top of the hallway wall, her legs dangling down through the hole.

“Yeah, m’peg is gonna punch right through those if I put my weight on it,” Junkrat agreed, having finally stopped his insane cackling while Symmetra was distracted by climbing up.

Genji hummed, a sign that he was thinking. Symmetra used the moment to pull her legs up and stand on top of the wall, moving a few steps away along it to survey the space she found herself in.

Though the ground level had been a maze, the upper space was, as Genji had said, completely open save for the building’s support columns and occasional bundles of wiring that dropped from the roof beams to the constructed walls below. Symmetra found her attention drawn by one bundle in particular, the silver-wrapped cable for electricity intermixed with wiring that was far more colourful - bright yellows and blues. They all went to a single place.

There was movement at the corner of her eye, and she turned to see Hanzo climbing up through the hole onto the top of the wall.

“Those are data and communication cables.” Symmetra pointed. “They appear to all be going to the same room.”

“Good eye, love!” Tracer chirped, suddenly beside her on the wall. Symmetra startled, and felt a slight press on her back as Hanzo reached to steady her so that she wouldn’t fall. She nodded a thank you to him once she was sure of her balance, and received a nod in return.

“D.va, are there handholds on your mech that Junkrat could use?” Genji asked. “Ones away from its thrusters?”

“I like this plan!” D.va declared with a leap in logic. “But Rat will have to be on top, and the ceiling is gonna hurt him when I hop.”

“Ohh, bunnying ta the support beams. I like it!” Junkrat put in.

“Indeed, but if you are injured setting up the charges may be an issue,” Genji said.

Symmetra considered. “I can put a shield over the top of the mech,” she offered. “The ceiling tiles are fragile, it would not need to be substantial.”

“Good. Can you do it without having to go back down?” Genji asked.

Symmetra shook her head. “It will be easier to reach from above, if someone will brace me. Junkrat, if you will climb into place?”

“Gotcha.”

“Maintenance access straight up the back, Rat, you remember,” D.va told him. “There should be loops you can hold on to just above the windshield, by the matrix projectors.”

Junkrat grunted in response.

Hanzo jumped over to stand on the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. Symmetra made her way back to the hole, and carefully knelt beside it. With Genji’s arms a reassuring, solid anchor around her waist, she leaned down though the hole.

While she had been manoeuvring, Junkrat had climbed on top of the Meka and looped his hands though the handholds D.va had directed him to. Symmetra reached down and carefully created a shield panel over his back, anchoring it to the mech with solid legs to either side of the Junker’s body, making sure that they sat just slightly wider than his shoulders. It was an odd angle to work at, but not an impossible one for her, though she was thankful that the demolitionist had left the spiked, explosives-packed tire that he frequently wore on his back for missions back at the base since that meant the support struts could be much shorter, making the end result much more solid and likely to last through multiple jumps.

“Be careful to keep your head down when climbing on or off,” she advised as she finished. “The shield is not designed to be struck on its edges, and it will last longer if you do not bump into it.”

She caught Junkrat giving her a thumbs-up as she withdrew from leaning down through the hole. Genji helped her to her feet.

“We will divide our efforts,” the cyborg decided aloud. “Symmetra, go to the room you spotted and extract everything you can. Hanzo, go with her, guard her back.”

“Very well,” Hanzo acknowledged.

Symmetra nodded. “I will endeavour to be swift.”

The rest of us will accompany Junkrat, to defend him while he sets up his bombs,” Genji went on, pausing to receive acknowledgements from the other three. “D.va, your first jump is to your one o’clock.”

D.va whooped like she was at a sporting match. “Gimme an all clear!”

Symmetra jumped the hallway, catching Hanzo’s offered hand to guide her landing, and set off along the wall toward the colourful cables, the archer following close behind her. “Symmetra, clear,” she said as soon as she was away from the place they had been in.

“Tracer, clear!” the woman chirped.

“Hanzo, clear.”

“Genji, clear. Take your jump.”

Abruptly, there was gunfire, like short, sharp rain through Symmetra’s headset.

“Hostiles spotted!” D.va called. “Engaging bunny airlines!”

“B- Bunny-” Junkrat howled as the bubblegum pink mech crashed through the ceiling, thrusters blazing.

“Target landing zone spotted!” the mech adjusted to aim more precisely toward a roof support column in nearly the opposite direction from where Symmetra and Hanzo were headed.

Hanzo touched Symmetra’s elbow, and she started at the unexpected contact.

“We must move swiftly,” he said, and she nodded, hurrying as fast as she could on the narrow wall tops.

Junkrat yelped loudly over the communicators.

“Touchdown!” D.va called. “Rat, get off my windshield!”

“Not like I slid on purpose!”

“Your junk better not leave a smear!”

“Please,” Genji’s voice broke into the argument, “just set up the bombs before we are found again.”

Thanks to the maze-like pattern of the walls, Symmetra and Hanzo couldn’t take a straight path to the place where the colourful cables plunged beneath the ceiling. Instead, they had to raggedly zig-zag their way there. They hadn’t even reached their destination when Junkrat finished setting up bombs on the first pillar and climbed back on top of D.va’s Meka.

Genji gave D.va the heading for her next jump and the two were off again with a whoop from the young woman and a cackle from Junkrat.

“I would complain about the lack of stealth in your yelling, but between the siren and the very obvious crashing, I wish more for a headset to filter the noise like Symmetra’s,” Hanzo commented.

“You would not wish for my helmet?” Genji asked, a tone completely unfamiliar to Symmetra in his voice. “It also filters noise if I wish it to.”

“Only one Shimada in ridiculous head-gear per generation,” Hanzo answered after a pause. Genji made a sound that seemed to be approval, and Tracer giggled again.

By the time Symmetra reached the cables Junkrat had finished setting up the second set of charges and was once again climbing up onto the mech.

“Symmetra, wait.” Hanzo’s voice stopped her as she leaned down to pry a ceiling tile loose so that they could drop into the room below. “They may have thought to guard their data when they found out there were intruders, disorganized as they are.”

“D.va, your next heading is four o’clock,” Genji said. “Hanzo, good thought. Check the room.”

Symmetra watched Hanzo as he eyed the dimensions of the room by way of the the walls showing above the ceiling tiles. She expected him to use another sonic arrow, but he didn’t reach for his quiver.

Over the comms, D.va called “Launching!” followed by another crash.

Hanzo caught Symmetra’s attention with a flick of his hand. “The door is most likely to be there,” he said, gesturing with the end of his bow at a section of one of the walls. “Be prepared to shoot.”

Symmetra unhooked her photon projector from her hip and held it at the ready as Hanzo leapt over to the wall he had indicated, landing so gracefully that she couldn’t perceive it shifting at all. With a glance over at her, he carefully leaned out and slammed one end of his bow into the centre junction of four ceiling tiles within the room, sending them to the floor below with a clatter. Symmetra was presented with a perfect view of a door in the wall below, exactly where Hanzo had pointed.

D.va landed with a screech. “Hostiles!” she exclaimed.

Symmetra’s finger tightened on the trigger of her projector, charging up a ranged bolt.

“Hold them off!” Genji ordered. “Junkrat, set the bombs!”

The guns of D.va’s mech started, a basso roar in her headset as the door below Hanzo sprang open and three men with guns scrambled into the room. Symmetra’s projectile shot took one in the upper chest and throat, which mercifully cut off his scream of pain. Hanzo reached into quiver, pulled a faintly glowing arrow, nocked it, aimed, and fired.

The scatter arrow sang like glass bells as it struck the concrete floor and split, the flechette heads flying to slice and impale. One of the remaining two men went down, blood gushing from his thigh and chest as he cried out. The other made a terrible, animal noise, one of the flechettes impaled through his lower jaw to come out through one of his cheeks.

Symmetra forced herself to not look away as she charged up another projectile. Both men were still armed, even if they were terribly injured, and that meant they were still dangerous. Hanzo apparently felt the same way; the man with the flechette through his face fell, an arrow though his heart. Symmetra fired her fresh projectile at the remaining wounded man. It landed squarely in his chest, his having been too occupied with trying to spot and fire at the archer lurking almost directly above him to see the lethal ball of energy coming before it was too late.

A voice too deep to be anyone on the team other than Hanzo hummed faintly through her comm, and the man dropped into the room, a new arrow already nocked in his bow.

“See if you can cluster them,” Tracer called from the other fight, “I’ve got a pulse bomb charged up.”

Hanzo waved at Symmetra to jump down. “The guards here have been cleared, but they may have called for backup. I will keep watch while Symmetra extracts the information we came for.”

“Agreed.” Symmetra turned toward the computers sitting by a small server bank, but as she did so something else caught her eye. An empty power bar dangled from the ceiling nearby, plugged into an extension cable that had been hooked through the supports for the ceiling tiles. “Wait, I have an idea.”

She reached up to the power bar with her artificial hand, allowing her fingertips to run over the plugs. The sensors in the metal informed her there was power. “Excellent,” she murmured to herself. Quickly, she pulled it a little bit lower and then created turrets, hooking them into the electricity and attaching them to the strip until it resembled an over-sized bunch of giant white metal grapes.

“A secondary defence,” she explained to Hanzo. “The turrets will automatically fire upon anyone who lacks my identifying tags. The entranceway is within their range.”  
Hanzo nodded, his eyebrows raised. She paused a moment more to make a scatter arrow to replace the one he had used, and went to the computers.

“Bombs away!” Tracer called as Symmetra reached the server. There was a pop and a crash as she bent over the array to assess which of the computers were actually connected to it.

“Messy,” D.va commented, quietly for her. “Hostiles down.”

Symmetra resolutely didn’t let herself think about it, and tried to not consciously register the smell of blood and death in the room as she traced data cables from the server to one of the computers.

“All set up here,” Junkrat reported. “Next!”

Symmetra tuned them out as she flicked the computer and found that luckily it was already on and that if it needed a login someone had already done so and simply left it that way. Hoping that whomever it had been was not someone wiping the server because of the building having been invaded, she pulled a high-capacity data stick from her hip pouch, hooked it into the computer, and began navigating directories to find anything of interest.

The person who had last been using the computer had left several spreadsheets and maps open, along with a blueprint for a building she didn’t know. Planning for a future action, she would guess. She copied them to the drive, along with all of the other files in the folders they were saved to. Two of the open spreadsheets were clearly financial in nature, so she ran a search for any other similarly named files.

She found success with the third result of the search. An entire subdirectory with multiple folders full of files of bank transactions and purchase orders. To her mildly appalled amazement, the files weren’t even encrypted. It seemed that the information being on a server that was only connected to a single computer had been deemed security enough.

If Talon had indeed been feeding this particular group of terrorists money, they were going to be very annoyed if they ever found out how insecure the information had been. Symmetra found the thought rather pleasing.

“I am moving the turrets,” Hanzo said. Behind her, there was a clatter as more ceiling tiles fell to the floor. She continued working.

She copied everything to her data stick and, finding that it wasn’t anywhere close to full, then copied as many folders and subdirectories as she could find on the server. There was one encrypted folder that she found eventually, lurking in a subdirectory of a subdirectory and named solely in wingdings. She made sure to copy that one.

As she worked her way methodically through the server, she vaguely registered the other members of the team setting up charges on four more support columns, and dealing with another group of the terrorists that had stumbled across the quartet as they were about to move. Genji had very literally gotten the drop on that group while D.va distracted them, though Junkrat spent much of the time setting up his bombs on the next pillar grumbling about how he was bleeding, so he had apparently caught a bullet — albeit not anywhere serious from the sound of it.

They finished before Symmetra did.

“Still got some left,” Junkrat said. “Could do up one a’the outside walls, maybe.”

“Give me a couple, Junkrat,” Tracer said.

“What for?”

“They’re living here as well as running ops,” Tracer explained. “There’s got to be at least an armoury in here somewhere, maybe a bomb assembly station too. I thought I’d see if I could find ‘em and drop off your little parcels to make sure they go when the building does.”

“Ooooo”

“Make sure you are careful, Tracer,” Genji cautioned, “they will be guarding the armoury.”

“Will do!” the pilot assured him.

Having extracted as much as she could from the server, Symmetra removed her data stick and turned her photon projector first on the server and then on the computer that had been attached to it, melting both into an unusable state.

“I found their armoury!” Tracer announced. “I think? It might just be an ammo dump, not many guns here. Oh well...” There was a whooshing buzz. “Oops. Oh, huh.”

“Tracer, what happened?” Genji asked.

“I rewound just as I dropped the bomb and I have an extra one now?” she answered, her tone lilting up at the end.

“I... was not aware this was a thing you could do,” Genji responded.

“Neither did I!” Tracer chirped back. “Win’ is going to pop a gasket when I tell ‘im!”

“Since there is now an extra extra bomb, why not bring it here,” Hanzo put in, and Symmetra recognized the way that Genji asked questions without actually asking them. “If they have backups, they seem foolish enough to keep them in the same room as the originals.”

“Ooo, good idea! I’m on my way!” Tracer called.

“Symmetra,” Hanzo said, getting her attention, “I am in need of more scatter arrows.”

Symmetra moved to create one as she skirted past the bodies by the door of the room to where Hanzo stood keeping watch down the hall outside. She drew in a breath, not quite a gasp as she drew close enough to see out of the room.

The hall ended next to the computer room door with one of the mismatched added partitions that the terrorists had put up, but in the other direction the hall extended nearly the entire remaining width of the warehouse. There were some five or six bodies sprawled in it, one at close to the far end, arrows in all of them. Some of the several doors lining the long hall had been thrown open, projecting out into the narrow space in a very odd - and dangerous - design choice.

She could see a trail of blood to behind one of the open doors, and the glitter of her created scatter arrow flechettes embedded in the walls.

“They have been probing my defence,” Hanzo said, accepting the scatter arrow she had just created from her. “Some of the doors house rooms that open into other halls. The last two entered from there.”

Symmetra nodded despite his not looking toward her, and quickly created another arrow.

“Not a good sign, that,” Tracer said, dropping into the room as lightly as a landing bird. “I brought the extra extra.” She tucked the bomb, a thing of wires, scrap metal, and bright yellow duct tape, on top of a rat’s nest of power bars and cables that lurked under a desk in a corner of the room.

“Are my scatter arrows ineffective?” Symmetra asked, eyeing the glittering motes embedded in the walls.

“It is not the arrows,” Hanzo answered immediately. “The walls, they are...” he paused, brows knitting, “it is,” he spoke a little in Japanese. “I do not know the word. The vanes stick in it rather than rebounding as they should. It is too soft.”

“The team will make our exit from the computer room, then,” Genji said. “Better than fighting backward along the walls to us. We will join you soon, hold until then, brother.”

Symmetra gave the next arrow to Hanzo. “I will create a transporter shortly,” she reported. “Once I have refreshed Hanzo’s supply of arrows, I will make the return pad.”

“We’ll be fine,” Tracer assured the team. “’Anzo’s a crack shot an’ I’m too fast for ‘em to hit. Wish maybe my pulse bomb was charged back up, but-”

Very suddenly, the alarm that had been blaring the entire time died mid-whoop, and the lights stuttered.

“What-”

“Found the fuse box!” Junkrat crowed.

“Small mercies,” Symmetra murmured, reconfiguring her headset. As she did, she caught a noise that had previously been filtered out. “Do you hear that?” she asked. “There are men yelling.”

“Yeah, now that the alarm’s off...” Tracer cocked her head and vanished upward in a blur of blue light. There was a moment where Symmetra could faintly hear the sound of the pilot blinking through the space above before her voice came over the comms again. “We’ve got a problem! A whole lot of ‘em coming for us! I can’t- Without my pulse bomb there’s too many for me! They’ll be on the hall soon!” There was a crackle of gunfire, and suddenly the woman was back in the computer room, her eyes wide. “They’ve figured out we’re above,” she added. “We’re pinned!”

“They must come down the hallway to deal with us,” Hanzo said. “I will deal with them as soon as they do.” He drew a single arrow from his quiver.

“You’ll get shot to ribbons!” Tracer protested.

“I will only need a second or two,” Hanzo snapped back. “They will have to be more than lucky to do more than graze me at that range.” He narrowed his eyes to glare at Tracer, rolling his shoulders.

“Brother, I do not like you relying on our opponents’ lack of luck,” Genji commented. “We will be there soon, do not-”

“There is no time to argue this!” Hanzo snarled.

Symmetra was at a complete loss as to what the archer could possibly do in a second or two that would stop a large group of armed attackers, but she decided that if the other team members weren’t going to argue that he couldn’t so such a thing, it certainly was not the time for her to bring it up.

“I can throw a shield down the hall,” she said instead. “It will only last a few seconds, but if that is what Hanzo needs...”

“They are coming!” Hanzo, who had been watching around the door-frame called. “Do it! And stay behind me!”

“Genji, Rat’s onboard, which way do I jump?” D.va yelled.

Simultaneously, Genji called “Hanzo, don’t-”

Symmetra ignored them. The shield was already mostly formed in her hands as she slid sideways though the door, holding it between herself and the length of the hallway. Still wrapped up in tying off the wireframe, she sensed more than saw or heard a few stray bullets ping off of the shield from the varied pack of the building’s defenders cautiously coming down the hall, trying to use the opened doors as cover. A few of the leading men held makeshift shields of torn down drywall in front of them.

They were so obviously utter fools — mere drywall against the piercing power of arrows or bullets, the utter stupidity of it — that she almost faltered. Almost.

The shield fully materialized and Symmetra flung it forward even as she pushed herself backward into the partition, crying “Now!”

Her shoulders hit the wall behind her hard enough to feel the cheap construction give slightly at the force as Hanzo burst through the door, arrow already nocked and bow partially drawn. Impossible light sparked along his bare arm.

“ _Ryuu ga waga teki wo kurau!_ ” he half snarled and half howled, and released the arrow down the hall.

Light, brilliant, impossible blue light sprang from his arm, twisted around it, threw off incandescent sparks, and resolved into the heads of two dragons, followed by their bodies. Symmetra’s breath caught as they hurtled down the hall following the path of Hanzo’s arrow. Dragons. Dragons made of light, their bodies twining around each other before her in an utterly perfect geometric spiral. Flawless, even as they tore apart the amassed terrorists in the corridor.

Hanzo staggered backward and she reached out to steady him before he backed into her, her hands meeting his shoulders. Something thrummed through her at the contact, as if she could feel the light moving though the solid muscle beneath her palms. She gasped.

Dimly she registered as D.va’s Meka crashed through the ceiling into the room next to her as Hanzo shivered against her hands and pulled away, steady on his feet once again. Genji burst into the hallway, an agitated blur of green and silver. There were extra flickers of green around his back and shoulders she noticed. Symmetra felt dizzy, as if touching Hanzo had pulled extra power from her internal batteries and sent the building spinning.

“Hanzo, Symmetra. Are you alright?” Genji demanded, over-loud and hurried.

Somewhere in the background, Tracer was questioning Junkrat’s decision to wrap his injury with duct tape.

“Neither of us have been injured,” Hanzo answered for both of them.

Tracer was bemoaning how Mercy was going to react to Junkrat’s tape-wrapped injury, and D.va was laughing. Symmetra ignored them.

“Those... The hard light dragons- How?” she asked, burning with the desire to know. “For hard light to move that way... You have no lens!”

“No.” Hanzo turned to her and shook his head. “The dragons are not hard light, they are spirits.”

“Spirits?”

“Are you still able to create the transporter?” Genji asked, distracting her.

“Yes,” she answered. “It will only be a moment.”

“Best to make it inside the room,” Hanzo said. “If there are still defenders elsewhere in the building, it will buy enough time for all of us to leave.”

Symmetra nodded, and went back into the room, which seemed much smaller with D.va’s mech taking up so much of the available space. Hanzo reached out and touched her mechanical elbow as she did, ghost-light. She wouldn’t have even known he had touched her if she hadn’t seen him move.

D.va chivvied her mech as much to the side as she could as the three who had been out in the hall came back in, crowding Junkrat and Tracer aside as she did, leaving just a little bit more than the space needed for the base of the transporter free in the middle of the room.

“Thank you,” Symmetra said to the young woman, then she looked around to the others. “Make certain to stand back,” she warned. Standing within the area of the transporter as it activated could be dangerous, as it would immediately teleport whatever was within and nothing more. Symmetra had seen other students lose fingers or toes when they were learning, and had heard stories of entire limbs being taken off.

One of her teachers’ favourite stories during that unit had been of a young and near-sighted future architech who had lost his face to an activating transporter.

Symmetra closed her eyes for a moment to see the design she needed with her mind’s eye. Then she opened them again and called forth the intricate wireframe. With the experimentation and creation of the replacement scatter arrows, the turrets and shields she had made, the shots she had fired, and whatever had happened when she had touched Hanzo, it was more draining than usual to tie off the frame and solidify the design. Not that a transporter was ever less than draining — it required immense amounts of power compared to a shield or a shot.

At last, the transporter was up, and Symmetra watched, darkness clinging to the edges of her vision as her batteries strained, as it connected to its partner back in the hold of the plane and a shining oval of opalescent, blue-tinted light sprang from the base.

“I have opened the path,” she said, and felt herself falling.

Someone caught her before she could do more than crumple slightly at the knees. She blinked back the dark spots clinging to her vision, and looked down to see an arm covered in black and grey patterned fabric holding her upright. Hanzo. She had expected it to be Genji.

“...astonishing...” It was a quiet word in a low voice, speaking somewhere near her.

Symmetra turned her head and saw Genji. He was close, close enough to have caught her with how fast he was, but instead he was leaning slightly away, both hands up at chest level. From the angle of his visor, he was looking at Hanzo, but she could not see the archer’s face.

She pressed her hand to her breastbone, assuring herself that her body was still under her own command and that the lightheaded moment had passed, and pulled herself upright. Hanzo’s arm fell away from her slowly.

“There is enough charge for six transports,” she said, pleased when her voice didn’t waver. “Then it will dissolve. Go quickly.”

“Tracer.” Genji waved the pilot to the portal. She nodded, and went through. “D.va, Symmetra, then Hanzo. Junkrat, once they are through, activate your bombs and leave. I will pass though last.”

“Gotcha,” D.va acknowledged, and with careful, delicate manoeuvring in the tight space, pushed herself and her mech through the portal.

Symmetra wanted to protest. She ought to stay to summon another teleport pad if anything went wrong, but she could still feel her power reserves at low ebb. She needed to recharge her internal hard light cels before she could create another transporter. After allowing enough time for D.va to move her Meka out of the way, she stepped through the portal.

The first thing she saw on the other side was Tracer, her pistols in her hands as she watched the transporter. They exchanged nods, and Symmetra moved away from the portal. A few moments later, Hanzo emerged, blinking as if he had just stepped from shadow into bright light.

The wait before Junkrat came though the portal felt interminable. Tracer’s hands stayed on her pistols and D.va brushed her fingertips over the controls of her mech, not looking away from the shimmering oval.

Junkrat burst though without warning, Genji on his heels. They both tumbled as the shimmer of an active portal vanished behind them. Genji rolled smoothly back to his feet. Junkrat, on the other hand, somersaulted across the floor to end up flat on his back at Tracer’s feet with a high-pitched noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle. When he came to a full stop, the Junker thrust a hand in the air, holding a digital display with numbers rapidly counting down on it.

“Ohh.” Tracer holstered her pistols and became a blue and orange blur that zipped over to the outer wall of the hold, where there was an access door. The blur became very complicated and developed a scent of hot metal for half a breath before Tracer threw open the door.

The countdown in Junkrat’s still upraised hand reached zero, and everyone except him turned to look at the open hatch. The sound of an explosion followed by the rumble of a distant building collapse bounced through the mostly empty hold like drums.

“Ah, good for the soul,” Junkrat sighed from the floor, letting his arm flop down.

D.va turned from the door, and delicately manoeuvred her mech’s feet into the locking mechanisms for them attached to the floor of the hold. Once it was in place, she opened the hatch and slid out of the cockpit, bouncing in place and shaking out her legs.

“My poor Tokki,” she cooed to the mech, looking it over. “All dinged and scratched up. I’ll have to detail you when we’re back at base.” Having stretched her legs, she bent to the shipping straps and started securing the machine for the flight.

Hanzo slung his bow across his body, and walked over to the young woman. “Let me help.” He reached for another strap.

Genji swung his arms, and his shoulder vents popped and hissed before he meandered over to where Junkrat still lay sprawled spread eagle on the floor. “Need some help?”

Junkrat considered the offer before heaving a sigh. “Probably,” he admitted. “Wish I could’a seen m’work. It’d make me feel less shot. Always does.”

It was fairly certain, Symmetra decided, that she would never understand Junkers.

“I have to get some photos for Win’ on the way out, love,” Tracer called. “If you swear to touch nothing but the co-pilot seat I’ll let you sit in the cockpit for the fly-by.”

“Choice!” Still flat on the floor, Junkrat gave an emphatic thumbs-up.

Symmetra shook her head, and went to dismiss the transporter pad. Indulgently, she allowed herself to absorb some of the energy that had been powering it. A feeling of refreshment swept through her as she did, akin to splashing her face with cold water when she woke up in the morning. Which somehow reminded her.

Symmetra straightened, and marched over to Tracer, who was closing and fastening the door she had opened.

“The mission is over,” Symmetra said to her. “You will explain what Genji has to do with the rising moon.”

Tracer’s eyes went wide, and she turned bright red with alarming swiftness. “Ah, well, love, you see...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who wondered what Tracer and Junkrat were up to that ended up with Lena having a concussion and a black eye in her appearance in Field of Coltsfoot and Bramble, they were testing out the "duplicate live explosives" trick that was discovered on this mission.  
> In short: bomb go BOOM.
> 
> (Also, the term that Hanzo was trying to remember the word for in English was 'plasterboard'.)


End file.
